For those of you who are old school, or those of you who are salesmen, you’ll understand this analogy well.

If you’re in sales, you’re always building a pipeline of leads. Potential people that you hope will become customers.

You’re documenting each phone call.

* Called them on 9/10, pitched them.

* On 9/12 they called back and said they have some personal issues going on, and will be getting back to me at the beginning of October.

You follow up at the beginning of October with an email or a phone call.

You’re constantly building a funnel. So what happens several months into your new sales job or your new career, the sales start to fall in?  You start getting customers.

That’s how it works in the business world. It’s not exactly spontaneous. It’s very rare that you go on a sales call and immediately somebody says “yes, I’m going to do that right now.”

It’s about building rapport. It’s about building comfort. It’s about building a relationship

Dating used to be about spontaneity

It used to be, boy approaches girl on the street corner. They have a moment. Boy and girl look at each other. Boy is a real boy and he gets her phone number. They go out that weekend and fall head over heels in love

That’s how it used to be. Nowadays, dating is like building a sales funnel.

Everybody is swiping and texting all over the place.

People are on their ass. People aren’t meeting out and about. People are creating rosters.

Don’t laugh.

I have tons of friends who have rosters. As a matter of fact, a really good friend of mine writes down everybody he’s about to date.

He’s created a roster.

He’s got them ranked from 1 to 10, like it’s a draft

People are not spontaneous, because in today’s modern dating world, all people are doing is selling. They’re pitching each other via texts nonstop

They’re consistently re-evaluating things.

They’re creating a sales funnel.
As a matter of fact, a friend of mine called me the other day. He matched with somebody on Tinder. Back in July. No kidding.

They texted back and forth. They’re finally going to get together towards the end of October, when she’s back from her trip.

sales-datingWhat?

He had to work three months to get this lead? A person he’s never met before. Just to go out and have a face-to-face meeting.

In sales that works, because you don’t care what the prospect or client looks like.
You don’t care if you’re attracted to the client at all. You want to get the client so you can build your business.

There’s no such thing as chemistry, between you and the client. You’re not thinking about making out with the client, or throwing the client on the desk afterwards and having your way with them.

But three months to get a date and the second you see them you may have zero chemistry. You’ve wasted three months on a prospect? This is what dating has come to, a bunch of people cold calling one another and not ever really connecting.

Every lead you get on Hinge or Tinder or any of the other dating apps is just a cold lead. It’s a cold call. The longer you wait to meet this person, the less chance you have of connecting. Yet people are chasing each other for months.

It’s time we stop dating like we’re doing sales calls. It’s time to make a decision. As a matter of fact, just get on the phone, spend five minutes on FaceTime, and see if you’ve got chemistry with somebody. Instead of months and months and months of building the sales funnel.

What happened to the magic of boy meets girl?